Savage Green Development, LLC - About LandChoices

The Problem
According to Boston tax attorney Stephen J. Small, the nation's leading authority on private land protection options and strategies, "The biggest problem land conservation faces in this country is that private landowners are not getting enough information. Landowners don't know they have choices other than selling to a conventional developer."

What does this mean to you?
Your favorite lands that are not already preserved will probably not be recognizable in twenty years:

LandChoices' Mission: The Solution
LandChoices is a national non-profit organization promoting land preservation choices. LandChoices is working to reach landowners and provide them with land preservation choices BEFORE they make that fateful decision to subdivide their land for conventional subdivision development.

For landowners interested in preserving parts or all of their land, LandChoices provides land protection information and initial assistance to explain the different preservation options, then refers landowners to the appropriate group or organization that can assist them further on the ground.

For landowners who have decided to sell their land for development, LandChoices informs them about conservation subdivision design and how it can be more profitable than conventional subdivision development, allows the same number of homesites and preserves 50% to 70%+ of the buildable land.

If you are a landowner looking to dispose of your land, or preserve it, LandChoices provides important information to assist you. LandChoices helps landowners make better choices...for them, their family, the environment and America.

History
LandChoices was started by Kirt Manecke. Previously, Manecke served as the Executive Director and Director of Development and Marketing for a northern Michigan land trust. Using his marketing, public relations and sales skills, Manecke transformed this fledgling non-profit organization into a competitive business, taking it from fewer than 75 members to over 500 members within three years, and increasing total land protection from 900 acres to over 4,000 acres.

Manecke's business experience includes developing an award-winning successful start-up specialty retail business, using his extensive marketing experience as a software account executive, and expanding market share as a technical sales representative for a leading Minnesota inline skate manufacturer. Currently, Manecke works as a publicist for New York Times best-selling author Carl R. Sams II.

Conservation Subdivisions, Conservation Subdivision Design

Why is LandChoices needed?
There is a very low level of awareness among Americans of land conservation. Read a survey from Ducks Unlimited.

Voluntary land preservation agreements (also called conservation easements) keep lands in private hands and preserve traditional land uses, such as family farming and ranching. These agreements make it possible to prevent natural areas from being developed without forcing anyone to sell their land. A 2004 survey by Public Opinion Strategies and Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates reported, "The focus groups demonstrated that the concept of land preservation agreements is not even on voter's radar screens."

When forest, natural areas and working farms and ranches' losses are combined, approximately 5,000 acres, almost eight square miles of natural areas, are lost every day to development in the United States.

"For every acre we preserve, we are losing 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000," says former U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt. According to a 2005 report in the Wall Street Journal about investment firms snatching up huge tracts of timber lands "from giant paper companies" to sell for development, more than $10 billion dollars of U.S. timberland is going on the market for small-lot development in the next two years.

How will we spread our message?

LandChoices positions itself in the MEDIA to reach landowners before they make that FATEFUL decision to sell their land for conventional development. Marketing efforts include a broad spectrum of tactics, including traditional broadcast and print media, event sponsorships, sponsored and paid advertisements.

Virtual Appeal: LandChoices' informational website is an economically feasible way to reach landowners

Informational brochures

Books on land protection, conservation subdivision design

Direct landowner outreach: direct mail, etc.

Guerrilla marketing opportunities

E-mail campaigns

Land preservation seminars for landowners

Workshops on conservation subdivision design

Development and Conservation CAN COINCIDE.
Conservation doesn't have to mean a halt to development.

As more and more people flock to rural areas, landowners are going to be tempted by developers.

There are development options available, however, that can exist without destroying beautiful woodland, scenic places, lakes, rivers and wildlife.

LandChoices wants to get those land choices to landowners - before it's too late.

In the example at right, landowners turned down a developer's proposal that would have destroyed this 50-acre orchard. The landowners then created a conservation subdivision design called The Ponds at Woodward (PA) and received a 62% GREATER RETURN by preserving the working orchard.

conservation planning, twice green, conservation land development

From LandChoices' Founder and President, Kirt Manecke
"I spent my childhood exploring Michigan's beautiful rolling fields and deep forests. Like many of you, I heartbreakingly watched many of these places cleared and leveled for developments. Sadly, if conservation subdivision design had been implemented and if people were aware of land protection options, much of this land could have been preserved while still accommodating important economic development," says Kirt Manecke.

"I have served on the board of a local land conservancy and the fundraising committee of another. There are land choices for landowners, but it has became evident to me that in spite of all of the good work of local land conservation organizations, the message just isn't getting out fast enough.

Customers can't buy a company's products or services unless they know about them. LandChoices' public relations' activities reduce the information imbalance by telling the land conservation story to the public. I have never forgotten a note I once read in my college instructor's office: 'The media is a very powerful tool. Use it to help change the world'. Through LandChoices I hope to connect with a larger audience, help spread the word about land conservation options, and, ultimately, protect our special lands."

Publicity is a great purifier because it sets in action the forces of public opinion, and in this country public opinion controls the courses of the nation. -- Charles Evans Hughes

open space development, land conservation, landscape design

Doug Savidge, LandChoices' Advisory Group
President, Savage Green Development, LLC
Savage Green Development was formed to create Conservation Subdivision Developments (CSD's). Currently Savage Green Development is acting as Project Manager on a CSD in MA where 160 of 260 acres will be set aside as open space in perpetuity. Randall Arendt assisted in helping to draft the CSD bylaw with the town and then worked closely with Doug Savidge to walk the land and prepare a scale drawing.

Savage Green Development hopes to establish a nationwide network of committed developers to spread the concept of CSD in as many projects as possible.